Friday, June 29, 2012

The All Powers Labs " PowerTainer " worked and it worked well in front of not only Cummin Diesel crew but the U of Minnesota Morris and fellow Minnesota state officals.

Completely rad....

So we pulled off the cover to inspect the reaction happening

These are corn cobs at 800 deg C

Right above that black part is where the flamable gas is being pulled from to power the Cummins engine.

HOT!

Jim Mason of All Power Labs doing what he does best

Making fire....

This glowing 1800deg ceramic and stainless stack is called the flare.

Its design is to pull vaccum on the reaction during start up of the reactor.

The reason you can't start the engine off of the gas right away is, its super oily and tar filled and will gum up the motor, so for the first few minutes we use the flare to pull vaccum on the reaction and get the corn cobs glowing to 800deg c then when the gas is pure we switch to the Cummins engine to use the gas.

I have a soft spot for driving the big rigs....

"Grind them til you find them....."

My bad picture of the overall group from everywhere around the midwest, just coming to see this beast run for the first time. Cummins diesel big wigs showed up, U of M students, teachers and officals and USA Dept of Energy people, really cool to see where and why people came.

Any hard work in Minnesota deserves a hat off and a Grain Belt beer....

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

The last months for me have been a real ass kicking ... The 7 am wake up until 2am in the morning has started taking a tole on me physically and mentally, but with all these amazing projects non-stop, theres no way to say no.... Lucky I have Jen to sometimes grab me by the ear and tell me to leave my damn shop to enjoy life other then behind a welding mask....

Just over 1 inch thick stack of blueprints of parts I have made in the last month

Jen and I had to check out the solar esclips so we took out the welding gear to the beach...

Think it was the first time in weeks I had left my shop it felt like.....

The Red Wing boots off and happy dogs.... Robots are done, now for another project.

Between being part of robotic projects changing the world of science on a daily basis to green energy projects to save the world on a daily basis.... the fun doesn't let off and I must be part of all this amazing madness..

One of the projects that has been a huge one, was one I had to join in on because it had a meaning to me with it being created for not only helping the worlds energy problems by making it more green and enviromentally correct, but it was for a college university not far from where I grew up in southern Minnesota.

The project was funded by the US dept of energy and teaming up with the Unversity of Minnesota to build an completly mobile green energy generator that can run off of field waste generated during corn harvest or debaris from a desaster!

Nope, you can relax..... were not using the food part of the corn..... that gets used but we are using the cob waste that flys off the back of the machines during harvest, it is something that has never been used for anything, until now.........

The project was to build a large scale gasification power generator unit that can produce 100 KW of GREEN electrical power, with the fuel source being everything from corn cobs to wood chips or other waste.

The process is nothing new to the world, as gasifcation has been around worldwide since the early 1900s but the company I have been helping called All Power Labs out of Berkeley, CA has put a cool modern twist to an old idea.

I don't want to get to crazy talking about how it work because that should be your lesson to search up "gasification ", but the idea is very simple.

heres a quick MLS "how to" in a nutshell idea or something like that - Super heat wood chips, corn cobs, nut shells or other flammable material in a air tight vessel, only allowing in a controled amount of oxyge(air) in to created a hot glowing ember.

Here is the crazy part, during this glowing state of the charring material, the gas is extracted from the glowing ember using vacuum, the reason this is possible is because there is no flame to actually burn off the gas.

Its kinda like blowing on a glowing camp fire without a flame, and getting the fire coals red hot but the actual flame isn't there, unil you stop blowing in which that gas that is created off those coals is ignited and it burst in to flames, well.... What if you kept on blowing the coals and never let it light.... then you use that gas that should burn have ignited near the coals and you use it to run a engine or burn it in another place to heat.

Its a crazy idea but really simple at the core..... Theres a lot more fine details that have made this project a bit more fun then just the simple idea.

The goal of this project was to build a 20 foot classic shipping container in to an " all in one power generator" called the "gasification powertainer" that can be brought to the place of use and utility grid connected....

At the core of the container is some radness ready to make some energy out of almost anything that burns....

Example - lets say you have a field of nut trees or corn....

You can drop this container out in the field and plug it in to the utiltiy pole next to the field....

Next step is to pick your crops and collect the left overs and dump them in to the hopper.

The machine feeds them in to the gasifier and turns them in to a usable gas that can power the Cummins natural gas engine creating 100kw of power dumping back in to the grid....

Thats Nick M. on the left and Nathanel on the right

these guys, myself, Gabe and a crew hammered this thing out.

Thats the gasifier in a full stainless steel.

Not only did you not need to move the waste from the field, you also get the ash created from this process that can be put back on the field and you maximized your possible revinue from your field by using everything including the waste and creating energy that can be sold back to the utility company at a cost.

Once in the field you need to feed the beast.

The big Cummins engine is ready for anything.

fueled on coffee, mt dew and passion for what I do.... working around the clock to make sure with my team we got this bad boy up on the truck headed for Minnesota.

Loaded and headed for Minnesota....

California to Minnesota.....

the two states I talk about the most....

Jim Mason, Bear and I were on a flight days after shipment to set it up.

Look at that shot of MLS skunkworks from overhead located somewhere in this photo, Its always so damn beatuiful around the Oakland bay area, I need to leave my shop more...

When we got to Morris, Minnesota

it was all ready to set up... just connect some wires and double check some stuff

Bear was so stoked to learn about humid Minnesota summers.....

When it comes to Green Energy....

Don't mess with the U of Minnesota....

Almost the whole town of Morris, MN is run off green energy

either wind turbines, other biomass energy projects and solar...

I love Minnesota not only because I am from here but they really push for the future and the pratical thinking of whats next....

This view shows where the material is fed in to the hopper on the end of the container.

Some times I pretend to be the boss....

When really thats Jim Mason the real boss working...

Whoops, I shouldn't post this I think....

Get ready to party.....

I will give you a quick tour...

Your all invited to Morris, Mn to the U of M for the main running of this beast

Wednesday, June 6, 2012

When my brother and I were back in Minnesota, we wanted to build up a rad machine with no money and get some press for our company Metal Morphosis.

I found this crazy deal on a parted out 1969 Harley Sportster located in St. Louis...

The problem ended up being the thing had been almost blown to pieces but some dude riding the hell out of it maybe without oil or something and it needed some major work....

We decided it would be a full build from top to bottom and start over with some classic Harley XR flattrack flare but do it all in under one month...

The word had come in that we would be moving to California, and that I had to be there ASAP to film Discovery Channel about 2 weeks after buying the machine so the pressure was very high to get it done and get it done quick.

Once in California 2 or so weeks later, it became one of my daily riders for when I worked at Exile Cycles full time, but proved to be nearly a death machine more then once with its single rear drum brake and its dirt tires on the slippery and fast moving streets of LA.